System and method for providing a natural language interface to a database

ABSTRACT

A system and method for providing a natural language interface to a database or the Internet. The method provides a response from a database to a natural language query. The method comprises receiving a user query, extracting key data from the user query, submitting the extracted key data to a data base search engine to retrieve a top n pages from the data base, processing of the top n pages through a natural language dialog engine and providing a response based on processing the top n pages.

PRIORITY INFORMATION

The present application is a continuation of U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 13/074,419, filed Mar. 29, 2011, which is a continuation ofU.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/013,836, filed Dec. 16, 2004, nowU.S. Pat. No. 7,921,091, filed Apr. 5, 2011, the content of which isincluded herewith in its entirety.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a system and method of providing anatural language interface to a database such as the Internet.

2. Introduction

Recently, a large number of web based search engines, such as Yahoo® andGoogle®, have become widely available making it easier to findinformation over the Internet. The operation of these search engines isshown in FIG. 1 wherein a user with a computing device 102, such as adesktop computer or wireless handheld computing device, has clientsoftware such as a web browser that receives text in an input field. Theweb browser is directed to the website of the search engine (such asGoogle) which is transmitted from a search engine server 106 to thecomputing device 102. The search engine receives the query text and usesa particular search algorithm to search billions of webpages within theWorld-Wide-Web (WWW) 104.

These search engines came to organize the billions of pages ofinformation on the WWW in such a way as to make them accessible anduseful for those who submit queries into the search engine input field.The key technical innovation in the search engines lies in the abilityto index all words and phrases in the WWW and use an efficientinformation retrieval algorithm along with many computers to be able toinstantly find information per the user's request.

Finding information about a subject is as simple as typing keywords intoan input field. This is illustrated in FIG. 2. For example, if the userdesired to learn information about hurricanes, the user can simply typein the phrase “hurricane” into the search engine input field (202). Thequery is submitted to a search engine (204) which returns an orderedlist of webpages according to the particular search engine algorithm(206). Although searching and mining the web has never been any easier,there still remains a manual process for users need to examine the topfive or ten pages from the search to identify the answer to their query.Therefore, if one is looking to find out what the wind speed is ofhurricane Ivan, then typing this question into the Google input fieldfor example could provide an article that states “Hurricane Ivan isgaining speed and power”. While this is clearly relevant to thequestion, and contains the correct key words, it does not answer thequery correctly. Although it is natural for humans to think in terms ofasking questions, and not merely keywords, and key phrases, humans havecertainly become accustomed to operating differently when dealing withstandard search engines.

Users typically Type keywords such as Hurricane-speed and then manuallysearch through the relevant documents for the answer to the originalquestion. Finding the answer typically requires the user to searchmanually through each page and look for the appropriate answer. When ananswer cannot be found, users would normally provide alternative wordsin the hope of getting a different ranking of Website.

Another search engine example will further illustrate the problem of thetypes of responses delivered from the search query. This example relatesto a user who desires to find a specific type of information on atechnical computer question or error message. On the WWW, many websiteshave developed to provide information technology (IT) solutions tospecific error messages. These websites house a growing database ofcontent generated by users submitting questions and a technicalcommunity providing answers. In this manner, threads of informationdevelop on specific IT problems. The websites then may present a largenumber of these threads, where each thread includes a particularquestion or technical issue and the various responses and attemptedsolutions to the problem. Therefore, when others receive the same errormessage, they can find the solution to the problem.

For example, a user may have the Microsoft® Word application crash withthe error message “Winword.exe requested the runtime termination in anunusual way”. The user may submit keywords from this error message intothe Google search engine and get a response with a number of webpagesthat contain multiple threads dealing with various Microsoft Wordproblems. The user is then left to search multiple threads ofinformation to find the particular thread that relates to the particularerror message. In some cases, there may be hundreds of threads with nomechanism to find the specific answer. Furthermore, access to thethreads may be obtained only via a password and subscription to thewebsite. The user can get to the certain website wherein the answer tothe query is found but then be faced with multiple interactive threadsin which one of the threads holds the answer to the question. But theuser cannot identify which is the appropriate thread within the websitethat contains the answer to the question.

This illustrates a basic problem with search engines in that they do notprovide specific answers to user's questions and are based onnon-natural language keyword searching. In this regard the standardsearch engines in some cases are not useful because they only identifyWebsites containing many links to other webpages and may not providecontrolled access to a deeper layer of information which may hold aspecific answer to the user's question.

Accordingly, what is needed in the art is a system and method ofenabling a user to query a data base such as the WWW and obtain aprecise answer to a question.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth inthe description which follows, and in part will be obvious from thedescription, or may be learned by practice of the invention. Thefeatures and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained bymeans of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out inthe appended claims. These and other features of the present inventionwill become more fully apparent from the following description andappended claims, or may be learned by the practice of the invention asset forth herein.

A system, method and tangible computer-readable media for providing anatural language interface to a database or the Internet are disclosed.The method provides a response from a database to a natural languagequery. The method comprises receiving a user query, extracting key datafrom the user query, submitting the extracted key data to a data basesearch engine to retrieve a top n pages from the data base, processingof the top n pages through a natural language dialog engine andproviding a response based on processing the top n pages.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In order to describe the manner in which the above-recited and otheradvantages and features of the invention can be obtained, a moreparticular description of the invention briefly described above will berendered by reference to specific embodiments thereof which areillustrated in the appended drawings. Understanding that these drawingsdepict only typical embodiments of the invention and are not thereforeto be considered to be limiting of its scope, the invention will bedescribed and explained with additional specificity and detail throughthe use of the accompanying drawings in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates the basic architecture for searching the Internet;

FIG. 2 illustrates the prior art method of entering a query to a searchengine and receiving an ordered response of web pages;

FIG. 3 illustrates the basic architecture according to an embodiment ofthe present invention; and

FIG. 4 illustrates a method embodiment of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Various embodiments of the invention are discussed in detail below.While specific implementations are discussed, it should be understoodthat this is done for illustration purposes only. A person skilled inthe relevant art will recognize that other components and configurationsmay be used without parting from the spirit and scope of the invention.

The present invention relates to systems, methods and computer-readablemedia for providing a natural language dialog to a database such as theWWW, a corporate database, a private database or any other database. Ascan be appreciated, the primary benefit of the invention will be tosearch the WWW but there is no restriction unless specifically claimedto that as the searched database. FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplaryarchitecture for the invention. The computing devices and servers shownmay include such known hardware components as a central processor, a busconnecting various hardware components, memory, storage means such as ahard disk, random access memory, means for communicating and networkingwith other computers, and so forth. These components, improvements andvariations thereof based on different devices are known to those ofskill in the art.

As shown in FIG. 3, a computing device 302 enables a user to interactwith the device 302 as well as other databases such as the WWW 104. Thecomputing device 302 may be, for example, a desktop or laptop computeror a handheld wireless device. There is no restriction on the particularconfiguration of the computing device hardware or the particular meanswith which it communicates with other computing devices for searchingthe WWW or any other database. The compute device runs software thatprovides a user interface for interacting with the device. In oneexample, the client software is a browser 314 such as Internet Explorer®or Mozilla® wherein a user can direct the browser to a search enginewebsite such as Google. The search engine server 312 serves the webpageto the user on the compute device and when the user inputs a textsearch, the server 312 uses an algorithm to search billions of webpagesfrom the database 104 and presents an ordered list to the user's browser314.

The invention provides for a natural language dialog approach tosearching a database. In one aspect of the invention, the computingdevice includes a microphone 306 for receiving voice input from theuser. An automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine or module 308converts the speech into text 310. While the ASR engine is shown as partof the computing device 302, there is no restriction on where anyparticular hardware or software component resides. For example, themicrophone may be separate from the computing device 302 and the ASRmodule may run on the dialog server 304 instead of the compute device302. Those of skill in the art will understand the variations that arepossible and contemplated while maintaining the core principles of theinvention. It is preferably that a large vocabulary speech recognizer beused as the front-end to the user's request.

The text is transmitted to a dialog server 304 that extracts key datafrom the user query. Various modules may be programmed to perform thesteps set forth herein for practicing the invention. Those of skill inthe art will understand the programming language and means for creatingthese various modules. Reference is also made to FIG. 4 as the steps ofthe method embodiment of the invention are discussed. A benefit fromthis invention is that the user can provide a natural language speechquery that he or she would not otherwise input into a search engine suchas Google. The user may say, for example, “what was the top speed ofhurricane Ivan?”. The system receives the user query (402). Theextracted key data (404) is preferably key phrases and keywords from thenatural language query. This key data may be extracted from variousalgorithms known to those of skill in the art, such as a variation ofInformation Retrieval-based methods with TFIDF (Term-frequency Inversedocument frequency measure). Examples of the key data in this querycould be “top speed” and “hurricane Ivan”.

Once the key data is extracted from the user query, the data (wordsand/or phrases) are used as input to at least one search engine such asGoogle (406). In one aspect of the invention, the data is submitted to aplurality of search engines simultaneously or in a particular order or arandom order. The results from the search engine search (or search frommultiple search engines) identify a top n pages.

The top n pages may be organized or pre-processed by the server 304 toprepare the n pages for processing through a natural language dialogengine (408). One example of such preprocessing would be toautomatically manage entry of a user's login name and password to entryfields associated with a website (such as the IT help website discussedabove) which enable the system to process the pages viewable byregistration only or where any kind of security, restrictions or accesssteps need to be taken for viewing. This may be an entry based on aprevious manual registration by the user or may be an automaticnegotiation between the server 304 and the particular website unknown tothe end user or as part of a subscription plan in which the user may beautomatically charged a certain fee to obtain the one-time access to thedata in the website. Websites with restricted or registration-onlyaccess may need to be modified to enable negotiation based on apre-registration or dynamically at the time of the search and response.In other words, some of the top n pages may require some password orother steps necessary to view and gain access to that data forprocessing and preparing the response.

A dialog engine as used in the invention may be based on, for example,question and answer technology and is able to process the pages andprovide a natural language response to the question asked. Those ofskill in the art are aware of such engines in that they are availablefrom such companies as IBM and AT & T Corp. The natural languageresponse may be based, for example, on particular text found within thetop n pages. Taking the IT support example above where the user ispresented with hundreds of threads of conversations, a benefit ofprocessing the webpages and links from those webpages as well is that anatural language result can be presented to the user without the needfor the user to cull through so many threads to find their answer.

From the dialog engine processing, a natural language response isgenerated (410). At this point, there are a number of technologies forpresenting that response to the user. For example, the response may begenerated as text in which case a text-to-speech module running on anycomputing device within the architecture can “speak” the answer to theuser. Or, the user may be presented with the text of the answer in abrowser with further organized options to click on the underlying pageswhere the information was retrieved or to view other websites and soforth.

In the hurricane example, the user may be presented with the answereither as text or audibly: “The top speed of Hurricane Ivan was 155miles per hour, more information may be found at this link.”

The invention may operate in both a text-based mode and a speech-basedmode. It is further contemplated that a multi-media presentation may beused to enhance the interaction. For example, a virtual agent may be theinteractive means by which the user speaks to provide the query and fromwhich the response received. In this regard, an aspect of the inventionis that it can operate in a dialog mode or an instant messaging modewhere the user can chat with a virtual agent to get information or toprovide subsequent relates questions on the same topic. The inventionimproves the user's ability to receive a specific response to a naturallanguage query that is not possible from the known search engineapproach that presents a plurality of webpages that may or may notcontain the answer to the user's query.

In another aspect of the invention, a machine learning algorithmcontinues to find related documents from the database related to theinput query and can expand the search accordingly. For example, afterthe system response is provided, the machine learning process cancontinue to find related information and can then present the user withan option to review the related information separate from the firstprovided response. The option to search through these additionaldocuments may be presented to the user via a graphical user interfacesuch as the browser or through a virtual agent.

Embodiments within the scope of the present invention may also includenon-transitory computer-readable media for carrying or havingcomputer-executable instructions or data structures stored thereon. Suchcomputer-readable media can be any available media that can be accessedby a general purpose or special purpose computer. Computer-readablemedia comprise RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM or other optical disk storage,magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any othernon-transitory medium which can be used to carry or store desiredprogram code means in the form of computer-executable instructions ordata structures. When information is transferred or provided over anetwork or another non-transitory communications connection to acomputer, the computer properly views the connection as acomputer-readable medium. Thus, any such connection is properly termed acomputer-readable medium. Combinations of the above should also beincluded within the scope of the computer-readable media.

Computer-executable instructions include, for example, instructions anddata which cause a general purpose computer, special purpose computer,or special purpose processing device to perform a certain function orgroup of functions. Computer-executable instructions also includeprogram modules that are executed by computers in stand-alone or networkenvironments. Generally, program modules include routines, programs,objects, components, and data structures, etc. that perform particulartasks or implement particular abstract data types. Computer-executableinstructions, associated data structures, and program modules representexamples of the program code means for executing steps of the methodsdisclosed herein. The particular sequence of such executableinstructions or associated data structures represents examples ofcorresponding acts for implementing the functions described in suchsteps.

Those of skill in the art will appreciate that other embodiments of theinvention may be practiced in network computing environments with manytypes of computer system configurations, including personal computers,hand-held devices, multi-processor systems, microprocessor-based orprogrammable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframecomputers, and the like. Embodiments may also be practiced indistributed computing environments where tasks are performed by localand remote processing devices that are linked (either by hardwiredlinks, wireless links, or by a combination thereof) through acommunications network. In a distributed computing environment, programmodules may be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.

Although the above description may contain specific details, they shouldnot be construed as limiting the claims in any way. Other configurationsof the described embodiments of the invention are part of the scope ofthis invention. Accordingly, the appended claims and their legalequivalents should only define the invention, rather than any specificexamples given.

We claim:
 1. A method comprising: extracting, via a processor, key datafrom a user query; submitting the key data to a search engine to performa search and to retrieve a set of top n pages from a database, whereinin response to a restriction to access a restricted page of the set oftop n pages, the processor without user interference negotiates a fee toovercome the restriction independent of a user navigation to therestricted page; providing, at a first time, a response to the userquery; after providing the response at the first time, continuing,without further user input, to search for information associated withthe user query using a machine learning process to expand the search;and presenting an option to a device associated with a user, at a secondtime which is later than the first time, to view the related informationseparate from the response.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein theresponse is text-based and audible.
 3. The method of claim 1, whereinthe user query is one of a natural language speech query and atext-based query.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the key datacomprises one of keywords and key phrases.
 5. The method of claim 1,wherein submitting of the key data to the search engine furthercomprises submitting the key data to a plurality of search engines. 6.The method of claim 1, wherein the user query is received via a speechrecognizer.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein the response is a naturallanguage response provided via synthetic speech.
 8. The method of claim1, wherein the response is a multimedia response.
 9. The method of claim1, wherein the user query and the response are provided and received viaa dialog mode.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein the user interactswith a virtual agent in a dialog mode.
 11. A system comprising: aprocessor; and a computer-readable storage medium having instructionsstored which, when executed by the processor, result in the processorperforming operations comprising: extracting, via a processor, key datafrom a user query; submitting the key data to a search engine to performa search and to retrieve a set of top n pages from a database, whereinin response to a restriction to access a restricted page of the set oftop n pages, the processor without user interference negotiates a fee toovercome the restriction independent of a user navigation to therestricted page; providing, at a first time, a response to the userquery; after providing the response at the first time, continuing,without further user input, to search for information associated withthe user query using a machine learning process to expand the search;and presenting an option to a device associated with a user, at a secondtime which is later than the first time, to view the related informationseparate from the response.
 12. The system of claim 11, wherein theresponse is text-based and audible.
 13. The system of claim 11, whereinthe user query is one of a natural language speech query and atext-based query.
 14. The system of claim 11, wherein the key datacomprises one of keywords and key phrases.
 15. The system of claim 11,wherein submitting of the key data to the search engine furthercomprises submitting the key data to a plurality of search engines. 16.The system of claim 11, wherein the user query is received via a speechrecognizer.
 17. The system of claim 11, wherein the response is anatural language response provided via synthetic speech.
 18. The systemof claim 11, wherein the response is a multimedia response.
 19. Acomputer-readable hardware device having instructions stored which, whenexecuted by a computing device, result in the computing deviceperforming operations comprising: extracting, via a processor, key datafrom a user query; submitting the key data to a search engine to performa search and to retrieve a set of top n pages from a database, whereinin response to a restriction to access a restricted page of the set oftop n pages, the processor without user interference negotiates a fee toovercome the restriction independent of a user navigation to therestricted page; providing, at a first time, a response to the userquery; after providing the response at the first time, continuing,without further user input, to search for information associated withthe user query using a machine learning process to expand the search;and presenting an option to a device associated with a user, at a secondtime which is later than the first time, to view the related informationseparate from the response.
 20. The computer-readable hardware device ofclaim 19, wherein the response is text-based and audible.